EUROPE, CHINA, USA: ON-COMING TRAIN

Sean Egan is a credit analyst who boasts one of (if not the) most impressive records in the business.  




Back in '07 and '08 his boutique credit ratings agency Egan-Jones correctly warned its clients of the impending insolvency of a slew of large institutions, months before their more famous rivals S&P and Moody's and long before 99% of economists and so-called expert analysts grasped the scale of the crisis.

THE CURSE OF THE DOMED HOUSE II (Revenge of the Red Dragon)

The Fire Dragon dance, Hong Kong mid-autumn Festival.
But it may be China bulls getting a roasting in the Hong Kong stock market
this autumn...

In April I introduced my reader to the possibility that stock markets across the world were set for a major top, after discovering a venerable technical pattern in the charts going by the peculiar name of Three Peaks and a Domed House. 

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN...AGAIN.

Source: Market Anthropology

S&P500 hourly, summer 2007 (red) / summer 2011.  

This analog suggests a modest bounce here, then a shocking drop to new lows 
leading to a significant turnaround and major rally.

(Position as of 27th June 2011)

With cries of alarm over Greece now ululating across the financial airwaves, there's a sense of deja vu among some who recall the wild summer market of 2007.

DEAD CAT ON A WILD RIDE

(Flash Player required)

Lakshman Achuthan from the Economic Cycle Research Institute (the world's most reliable forecasting organization) sees an imminent global slowdown

It's been an unusually long time since I posted.  Between travelling, writing and work commitments I've frequently been tempted to 'put my oar in' but, frankly, I don't know that anything I might have said would have added much to the message I've been spouting in these columns for what seems like far, far too long.  

THE CURSE OF THE DOMED HOUSE

It sounds like classic Hollywood B-movie shlock.  




But as world stock markets storm back towards their highs in the wake of the March 2011 'nuclear correction', history may be about to inflict its equivalent of a mushroom cloud on this herd of raging bulls; because while they are busy making projections to sunnier uplands on the Dow, a number of important markets now appear to be forming a major top, in the image of a pattern known to technicians as 'Three Peaks and a Domed House'.

DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN

Remember this chart?

I unveiled it in December of last year to warn of a degree of buying pressure which, over the past 15 years, had invariably flagged up an on-coming market correction.

DISASTER, OPPORTUNITY

Japan's Nikkei 225 March 15th 2011:
a two day drop of almost 20%, the biggest since the crash of 1987

On a day when Japan's technicians are risking their lives fighting to prevent a Chernobyl-style nuclear meltdown and the country continues to count its dead, discussions about the stock market fallout inevitably sound misplaced.  

THE COMPLEAT INVESTOR: Part 3

Welcome to the climactic episode of our slow-burning financial thriller: an investment rookie's guide to the simplest, soundest, most consistently successful long term wealth-building strategy any rookie could ever hope to find.  

If you've not yet read Parts One and Two please do so now (this part won't make sense without them) because, if you're thinking seriously about taking the plunge into long term investing but have been uncertain how to go about it, or if you have been scared - or scarred - by the market implosions of the past decade, I can promise that by the time you've finished reading Part Three you're going to be in a position to move ahead and take that step with confidence.